Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Untold Story of Tiger King

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Starting point is 00:00:22 free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Tiger King, Carol Baskin. and her missing husband, Don Lewis. It didn't make sense. There's something to this. Joe Exotic reached out to me. I got information that I haven't shared before,

Starting point is 00:00:39 but I'd love to share it with you. This is inside info. My group of friends are texting, and they keep talking about Tiger King. I got my way to episode three. And episode three is where it involved Carol Baskin and her missing husband, Don Lewis. Let's assume that the viewer hasn't watched it.

Starting point is 00:00:58 She was a woman that was advocating to close, of Joe Exotic zoo. He had a private zoo that housed big cats. There was a huge feud that went back and forth because remember, she's wanting to close down his zoo for the same thing she's running. So I watched that episode and it talks about her missing husband. I'm like, well, some of this just doesn't make sense. Like, what the hell happened to him? Did he take a plane or something?

Starting point is 00:01:28 Well, that's what was alleged, right? So she alleged that he, you know, got on this. this plane or went to Costa Rica and, you know, died along the way and no one never knew anything about it. It didn't make sense. And for me, being a law enforcement guy, like, I immensely were like, bullshit. There's something to this. Right.

Starting point is 00:01:47 Right. And so I decided I was going to, I literally pulled out the computer, wrote up like a Microsoft word, like a press release type of thing, just to put it on social media. Because I literally, like everybody else, we're all in the house, like, it's either we're scrolling through phones, watching reels, watching television. And so I put it out that I wanted to know what happened to Carol Basskin's missing husband. So as soon as I put that out, and it was COVID, it was a perfect storm. They had a couple hundred thousand views on that within like hours. I'm like, holy shit. My inbox, my DMs were just like saturated, right? So I'm going through all of these

Starting point is 00:02:25 and I get one and I'm like, huh, this lady was married to somebody that was on the Tiger King show. And she messages me and she's like, listen, I got information that I haven't shared before, but I'd love to share it with you. This is inside info. So I call her and she tells me that she was married to the handyman and that he essentially showed up with all of Don Lewis's fire. firearms in a van because he was given all of those by Carol Baskin. This lady knew that Don was missing three days before it ever even aired in the news. It wasn't even reported yet. How did she know?

Starting point is 00:03:11 And why is he showing up with all these firearms? So I'm like, okay, either this is complete bullshit or this has to be vetted out. So I'm like, do you mind if I call you again and we start this conversation again, but I'm record it so that way I can put it on a podcast right and she's like no I don't care so I call her up we go through the whole story again and I'm like but I need proof like how did this actually happen so at that point we called Hillsboro County and we're able to find out that yeah there was a bunch because she had a domestic violence issue with her ex-husband I think it was in 2000 or 2001 so don went missing 1997 so you're talking

Starting point is 00:03:54 four years later, right? She says, no, there was a domestic violence dispute. Her ex did something to her physically. I believe he pistol whipped her. I believe that, okay? And she says, no, there's actual police report. He was arrested for this. So I looked it up.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Sure than shit. He was arrested for domestic violence. Here it is. And then she's like, when police were here, when the sheriff's office was here, she told them about all the firearms and where the firearms came from. And this is three eight before. So yeah, so you're talking. So right now, I'm going to set the stage.

Starting point is 00:04:29 So this is 2001. 2000 or 2001, she has this domestic violence issue. Right. It's reported to police. So there's an arrest made, right? So there's documented, you know, evidence and things of what happened in her case. She tells law enforcement at that time, back when Don Lewis went missing, he showed up at our house. in a van full of firearms given to him by Carol.

Starting point is 00:04:58 That's what she alleged, right? But it's in the documents. Yeah. And then she starts telling them where all the weapons are hidden around the house. So they now collect all these firearms throughout the house. They were under the bed. They were in drawers. They're in closets.

Starting point is 00:05:13 They're all all Don Lewis's collectible items. So we're not talking just a random AR-15, you know, from a shop that you can buy anywhere. these are collector items. These are worth a lot of money. And he was given all of these, right? So now law enforcement has them all. They put him in their evidence fault, right? And so we're able to see this is true.

Starting point is 00:05:35 And I'm like... He was given them by who? By Carol. He was given them by Carol. She said, Don no longer needs these. You can have them. Okay. But keep in mind, at this point...

Starting point is 00:05:48 He hasn't even been reported missing. It hasn't even been reported missing. If anything, law enforcement may have just found out, but she's giving away his stuff. Well, what if he came home? So why would you be giving away his prize possessions? These are things that were valuable to him, right? And now you're giving away his prize possessions.

Starting point is 00:06:06 You know he's not coming. What if he walked home through the door in three days from where days? He's going to be pissed off that all his stuff is given away. She knows that's not happening. Bingo. So that's where I'm like, this doesn't make sense. So I started putting this stuff out on a podcast, right? I get a phone call from a TV producer.

Starting point is 00:06:24 Her name was Rebecca Sermens, and she calls me, and she says, look, we need an investigator for this TV show, which we ended up doing a whole show on investigation discovery. The show was called Joe Exotic, Tigers Lies, and Cover Up. So we talk about Joe for the first 20 minutes or so, 30 minutes, but then it turns into what happened to Don Lewis. and we did a whole deep dive into what happened to Don. We've been able to prove that there's no way he could have flown to Costa Rica. The type of planes that he flew would have refueled about three times on the way to get to Costa Rica. There's no fuel points on the way there. So that is it going to make sense.

Starting point is 00:07:03 Not to mention Don was old, right? He wasn't a young, healthy, strong guy. He was a much older guy when he passed away. And so you're talking about taking a door on. on a plane flying, I don't know, 130, 135 knots, whatever that translates to in miles per hour, you're trying to push open a door, you know, like, and it like, because there was a theory that maybe he, you know, he got thrown out of an airplane and all that, like, it's not going to happen. Right.

Starting point is 00:07:34 Like, it's bullshit. So it's still a mystery of what the hell actually happened to Don, but something definitely happened. And there's a lot of strange pieces along the way that we uncovered, that we put out the forgery that came about, that we put that all on the show. What was the forgery? So in order for her to receive all of Don's money, there was a power of attorney. To have that power of attorney, she can take control because he had things that were supposed to go to his daughters and various things.

Starting point is 00:08:06 Carol then controlled all that money. We ended up having a handwriting expert that has done things for the FBI. and all kinds. Like, this guy is a certified, true handwriting expert. He was able to take the marriage certificate of her and Don Lewis and put that directly over the power of attorney and is a utterly perfect match. And so I'm like, what are the chances of a perfect match? And he's like, dude, he's like one in a couple million. Like, it's not possible because as people write, you could do your signature a thousand times. They'll look similar, but they're never going to be the same.

Starting point is 00:08:47 This was an exact, traced duplicate. Right. Which is not going to happen. That, we've been able to show that now, and that ended up, we put that all over the television show. You know, TMZ jumped on it, and a whole bunch jumped on that. But we put that on the show, and that goes to show that there's been some deceit into some of this. There were some other things that we uncovered, too. involving the handyman.

Starting point is 00:09:11 There were checks written to him just under $10,000. He was given properties. He was given right after Dawn went missing, he was given three properties. They're money generating properties. Well, they had trailers on them or people were living on the land. He was given those for less than $10,000 a piece. And anything under $10,000, you don't need a paper trail for. He was given three.

Starting point is 00:09:35 He's a handyman. Like, you come in, you cut the lawn, you fix this. you know, all right, I got a busted pipe, go fix the busted pipe, whatever. Why the hell, would you give your handyman all that kind of property? No. I wouldn't either. You feed your husband to the tigers? I mean, I was going to say, if he had killed my spouse, chopped them up and fed him to the tiger,

Starting point is 00:09:54 like he'd get the property. That's what Joe Exotic has always said, right? Right. And in all fairness, we don't truly know what happened to Don Lewis, but we do know about the forgery. Right. We do know him going to Costa Rica on an airplane was bullshit. We do know there's a lot of things that don't add up. Same thing with all the firearms.

Starting point is 00:10:17 Same thing with, you know, he wasn't even reported missing yet. You're already giving away his prize possession. So there was a lot of stuff that didn't make a whole lot of sense. So if anybody hasn't seen that show, Investigation Discovery, Joe Exotic, Tigers Lies and Cover Up, it literally goes through the details of that. Was the body ever found? Body was never found. Don was never seen again.

Starting point is 00:10:35 So wherever he is, however that came up. about, whether he was disposed of in a lake, whether he was chopped up fed to the tigers, whether he was, you know, nobody truly knows what happened to him. And what? So, but is it alleged that? It's alleged that she had some involvement with it, perhaps her and her father, who is now deceased as well, or dad hated Don. They were damn near the same age. So, yeah, he, he didn't, you know, she did something. What exactly did? Okay, it's alleged that she did something. Yeah. Okay? We don't know 100% for a fact if she did or didn't, but we can absolutely prove the forgery.

Starting point is 00:11:16 We can absolutely prove some of the anomalies that came about that don't make a whole lot of sense. But her behavior after the – But her behaviors – it indicates that she probably had something to do with it. It was very, very, very suspicious, to say the least. So, but, well, we did that show, and then – it wasn't it was probably about two, three months after that show aired. I actually got to talk to Joe Exotic himself. So Joseph Maldonado Passage, Joe Exotic.

Starting point is 00:11:47 He reached out to me and he's like, Was he incarcerated? He's incarcerated. Oh yeah, he was in prison. What was he in prison for? So he went to prison for another murder. Two murder for higher charges. That's what got him the majority of the time.

Starting point is 00:11:58 That's right. To kill her. For her, yeah. It was alleged against her. So Joe Exotic got the majority of his time in his sentence. was for two murderifiers. And then there was the crimes of, of the alleged to have killed five tigers to make room for younger tigers.

Starting point is 00:12:18 And so he calls me and he's like, look, man, I'm in prison. I didn't do shit. What they're alleging I did, I didn't do. Here's how I know. A lot of people don't know that Joe Exotic has a photographic memory.

Starting point is 00:12:32 Like, when I had to work with him to help him out, what he did is he allowed me access to his, Joe Exotic YouTube channel. That's what you would have seen in Tiger King where he was like shooting the mannequin of Carol and like blowing stuff up. That was all on Joe Exotic TV. So I would go on Joe Exotic TV and start breaking down the case of what actually went wrong. So he had a photographic memory.

Starting point is 00:12:54 Like he could literally tell me details. Like I don't know how hell on earth he knew that mark was there. Right there. Like it's insane. But it helped me out a lot. And I got all my information through the public records. And I literally read line for line on the transcripts and started calling out the bullshit. There comes a point in life when you realize you need to be more intentional about what you're eating every day.

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Starting point is 00:14:17 So a few of the things that I saw, which right out the gate, I don't know why his defense team, and if they did, I don't know about it. But his charges for the tigers should have never ran the same trial with the same time frame as his murderifiers. They should have been two totally different things. But the way the prosecutors did it was, let me convince everybody here in the jury that you killed five tigers. Because hell, if you're willing to kill an animal, would you be willing to kill a person? That was the mindset. Yeah, I don't think that that's true. I agree.

Starting point is 00:14:54 But what I do think is that the people on the jury will dislike you enough. 100%. I can, they feel they can prove the tigers. and I'll be so disgusted with you, I'll go ahead and find you guilty of this murder for hire that there's no proof of it. Because if we can get, if the jury will hate you for the tigers,

Starting point is 00:15:18 because most people don't like animal cruelty. Yeah. Right? They don't want that stuff to happen. So if I can convince a jury that you did this to five tigers, then a murder for hire would be a walk in the park, right? That's how we was convicted of. That's how it went.

Starting point is 00:15:31 What I will tell you through what I read and what I know. and I can disprove a lot of the bullshit that was in his trial. The way that, so we can either talk about the Tigers or we can talk about the murder for hire first. I don't know which one you want to go into, but we can do either way. Tigers. All right. So, yeah, it looked like he killed five Tigers. That's what it looks like.

Starting point is 00:15:56 What, for whatever reason, wasn't explained enough in the court process was all five of those tigers were older. They had a lot of ailments. We were talking arthritis. We're talking about, you know, just injuries that they've had that, you know, cats or animals. And what I've learned from animal experts is that when they're hurt or they're injured, they mask it.

Starting point is 00:16:20 They're not like they can just come out and be like, oh, look at my paw or like, look at my tooth, you know, or my jaw's broken, take a look at that. When they're hurting, they mask it. And until it becomes to the point where that pain is overbearing, that is when the signs really start to show. That's when they really come out with it. They become violent. They become reactionary.

Starting point is 00:16:41 So all five of the tigers that were killed all had documented ailments with the vet. And I'm going to touch on this when it comes to the vets. It's not like you can take a tiger to your local vet up the street that are on almost every corner. You have to be an expert in exotic animals. And so there might only be one or two in your entire state. They might be six to eight hours away. They're in different states, whatever. So he had an exotic animal veterinarian.

Starting point is 00:17:16 When Joe euthanized these tigers, that exotic animal veterinarian was not in town. But there were problems going on with the tigers and Joe needed to address it. He reached out to another exotic animal person, but that person was several hours away and wouldn't be able to get there for a few days. he didn't have the time. So he communicated with his own vet. And much like medicine for humans, you have the American medicine or the American Journal of Medicine that they use as a guide, right? It's kind of like a rule book, so to speak, of how they handle medicine. The vets have the same exact thing. Joe euthanized these tigers in accordance with the American medicine of veterinary medicine,

Starting point is 00:18:03 whoever the hell they want to say that. He used a small caliber weapon, shot them in the back of the head. And I know this sounds bad. And for all the petal lovers out there, I get it. I don't have anything to do with protecting them.

Starting point is 00:18:17 I'm just explaining a story, please. How do you think they kill cows? Right. You know what I'm saying? They got that thing that pahs. Right. So, you know, they got mad at me years ago. I had nothing to do with pregnant

Starting point is 00:18:29 tigers as just part of the story. I just want to put that out there again. I don't need that shit in my life again. But essentially, he used those guidelines and euthanized all five tigers in accordance with the American veterinarian and medicine. It was documented. Right. They were then buried. And then, you know, new tigers come in and things like that.

Starting point is 00:18:52 Well, when that came about years later with wildlife and fisheries that had that investigated this, there was an agent with them. He was tipped off by Jeff Lowe, he was on that Tiger King show. They dug up the tigers. So here's the problem. They dug up where the tigers were, and there was five tiger carcasses. Instead of removing the tiger carcasses and sending it off to the forensic pathologist that was in Oregon to examine these animals, they only removed the heads. They didn't take the bodies.

Starting point is 00:19:27 So only the five heads of the tigers, that's what you got to see on National Geo-Grogram. traffic and time and all these magazines or these agents with five tiger heads. They sent those tiger heads off. In court transcripts, when that forensic pathologist testified under oath, they said that she was able to find ailments with all five tigers just based on the skulls.

Starting point is 00:19:53 The manner of death was a gunshot. That's already known. But there were ailments outside of that that was not caused by the gunshot that goes to show, hey, one of them had like a crack from like up here, like, I don't know what you want to call mandible or whatever, all the way down across. There were literally ailments that would have caused a lot of problems.

Starting point is 00:20:13 And she's like, I believe that they would have had arthritis and various things. She said, had they sent me the entire tiger carcass, I could have told you if all of those ailments that were documented would be true or not. But she's like, I only have the heads. and with the heads I see... In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour.

Starting point is 00:20:37 Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields, like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. ...with all five tigers. why the hell did they not send the whole entire tiger carcass, right?

Starting point is 00:21:05 Like if you're going to do an investigation, you got to do it. If you can't leave any leaf unturned, you can't, you got to cross all the T's and dot all the eyes. And that, they did it. That is literally in a humongous gap. Right. Just the skulls. Why are we even having a trial on this at all if you only have this one, you don't have the full, you don't have the full picture of what happened. And also why, why am I being tried for this?

Starting point is 00:21:34 Like you couldn't, because you wanted to save some money, well, then let's not put me in prison. And they're saying he was killing tigers in order to bring in new tigers and so on and cubs. And like, that wasn't what the case was. And, you know, there was another part of the trial that they talk about, you know, Joe doing some other illegal action with somebody that wanted the exotic animal. No, this person paid for it. There's paper trails. Like, when you take an animal and you have like a zoo that. goes from state to state, there's records, there's documents that you have to provide.

Starting point is 00:22:05 The person that they were claiming purchased, the purchase one of the tigers are brought in this tiger wasn't even in the state at the date that this was even alleged, but somehow or another, this shit all seeps its way through. But again, you have the forensic pathologist that's telling you, there's ailments with all five tigers. If I had all the tiger carcasses, I could have tell you all every detail. But, of course, they made Joe look bad for the five tigers. and what people fail to realize, like, why didn't you, why didn't you shoot them with a dart and, you know, wait for them to fall asleep? Well, yeah, that works well in movies.

Starting point is 00:22:37 Like, I fire off one, one dart that has some sort of, you know, a chemical in it that puts an exotic animal down and has them going to sleep. It looks, it works that way in movies. But that's not how you back. But that's not how it really worked. You got to think this damn thing, the needle on that alone is about eight to nine inches long. It's a big ass dart because you got to get in deep. Remember all the muscle mass on a tiger, right? But aside from meat and muscle, you have bone.

Starting point is 00:23:04 So you might fire off this shot to try to put this animal to sleep, and you're hitting bones, you're hitting nerves. So what ends up happening? The tigers are in pain. Like, that hurts like hell. And they don't go to sleep right away. Sometimes you got to shoot them two or three times with that dart to get them to go to sleep. So what happens?

Starting point is 00:23:23 They're freaking out. They're having seizures. They're climbing up the walls. And, I mean, they're going nuts. inside there, it's extremely painful until they pass out. Right. A bullet's quick. But that could take 35 minutes of agony and pain just to now have them go out.

Starting point is 00:23:37 And now you're going to euthanize them by putting in a needle in their vein and using the chemicals they do to euthanize an animal. That seems far more cruel to me than something that's quick because he's built that trust with them. Right. And that's what he did. And I think people fail to realize that. And I don't think the defense team did enough to talk about that and capitalize that process of what really goes on. Right. So that was one part.

Starting point is 00:24:06 But now you move into the murder for hire. Total bullshit. And here's how I'm going to say this. The law, right, for murder for hire, federal law, because it was charged federally, you have to show intent. That is written in their statute, right? You're hiring somebody to go. commit this crime, you have to show intent. You and I can have a conversation right now. You could say whatever the hell you want, right, because it's free speech, right? Even if I'm undercover,

Starting point is 00:24:36 it doesn't matter. You can talk all the shit you want. The moment you show intent, it now turns criminal. And in Joe's case, you have James Garrison. He was the, the heavyset fat dude on the jet ski, right, he ended up getting the undercover FBI agent to go to Joe's zoo. He tried to arrange this meeting multiple times. Why? Because James Garrison himself was in trouble. So this was his way of trying to get the attention off of him, right? So James Garrison brings an undercover FBI agent to Joe Zoo.

Starting point is 00:25:13 Joe didn't invite the guy. Joe didn't ask for him. James Garrison brings him. He shows up to Joe and he says, Joe, this is the guy, you know, the guy that we talked about that, that, you know, to get care of that thing for you, can we talk? Let's go to this back office. So they go to this back office in the zoo. And this is what we're recorded on an audio. And it goes on for like 47, 48 minutes, whatever now it was. James Garrison brings it up about this is the guy I told you about to take

Starting point is 00:25:43 care of that thing for you. And so after prompting Joe multiple times, Joe's like, yeah, what is something like this cost? Guys, like, I need $5,000 up front and $5,000 upon completion. And he goes, yeah, all right, fine, I'll sell some, I'll sell some tiger cubs or something, right? Again, he said it. He didn't take action on it, right? So then he brings the conversation completely away from a murder for hire plot, completely away from it.

Starting point is 00:26:09 Goes to talk about other shit. Now the FBI agent's going, hey, I'll tell you what. He's bringing it back in. and he's like, if you go to Walmart, get two burner phones, bring me one of those burner phones. That's our only way to communicate. You have the burner phone. I have the burner phone. Nobody knows we're ever talking.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And as soon as the deal is done, as soon as we're done, and I take care of business, we smash, destroy the phones and get rid of them, and then there'll be no trace. And Joe's like, yeah, okay, I'll go to Walmart and get phones. Then the guy, then so goes back to a random conversation. He brings it back again and says, you know, I'll tell you what, Joe, why don't you give me the firearm you want me to use and I'll use it? I'll go down there and I'll use it with the firearm you give me.

Starting point is 00:26:56 And he goes, why the hell would I ever do that? I'm going to give you a firearm that's going to be traced back to me that you're going to use in a crime? Like, no, I'm not going to do that. So that didn't work. The conversation ends. The FBI agent leaves with James Gerritsen. He takes off.

Starting point is 00:27:14 Joe never won. He never sold any Tiger Cubs. He never called James Gertson. This guy gave him his phone number. He never called the undercover FBI. He never spoke to James Gerteson again. Did he ever get the phones? He never went and got the phones.

Starting point is 00:27:31 He never sold the Tiger Cubs. He never gave the guy a weapon. Right. He never did any of the things. And again, you have to show intent. Now, if he went and sold Tiger Cubs and said, hey, here's $5,000 for you. Right.

Starting point is 00:27:44 That shows intent. If he went and got those burner phones and brought him the burner phone, that shows intent. If he gave him a firearm to use of choice to go down there and kill him, that would show intent. And he did absolutely none of them. So now you got a question of, is this free speech? Because where's the intent? That literally the law specifically says you have to show intent. When you look at these murder for higher cases that go on today, what do you see law enforcement doing?

Starting point is 00:28:13 If it's an undercover agent, they get you to give you. Give them something of substance. Give me your vehicle registration. Give me the title to your car. Where is this person going to be? Something of value. Yeah. Like, oh, well, here's the route.

Starting point is 00:28:24 This is the time they go to the gym. They leave for the gym every day at this way. This is the route they take. This is where you need to do it at. Here's your money up front. Or I'll give it to you upon the life insurance that comes back. Any of the sorts, that shows intent because you now took it from conversation to something tangible. So what does law enforcement do a lot of times if they know about it beforehand?

Starting point is 00:28:43 They'll warn the person that's supposed to get whacked, right? And they staged the whole crime scene and bring the X out and show her. And then she thinks that happened. They show the pictures. And they, oh, my God. Right. Because now you've just shown, you literally have proved it from one side to the other. Well, what the hell do they have to prove in Joe's case?

Starting point is 00:29:01 So you had a conversation about a zoo. You're bringing him up on things that he needs to do to show intent. And he shows none of it. How do you convict him on that? Right. If that was the big piece that went into his appeal, his sentence did get reduced, but the judge only reduced it 12 months and one day. And the reason he's doing so much time is he had two charges for the murder fire against Carol Baskin. Typically, when you have charges like that, they'll be like, we'll run them, we'll run them together, and therefore, you know, you get 12 years on it.

Starting point is 00:29:36 And that's it. This judge decided, oh, no, you got 12 and 12, so I'm going to run them concurrently. or I'm running back to back. So now you have 24 years. So you finish serving time for the first charge. Now you got to run the whole second charge. That's why he has so much time. He's been in prison more than enough for anything that happened with the Tigers.

Starting point is 00:29:55 That would have been a one year at most and some heavy fines. But he's been sitting in prison now since 2020 or 2019, 2020, he's been in prison. So you're talking seven years and all his time is for murder for hire that legitimately, I haven't seen anything different to show that he did not show, like, where did he show intent? And that went into his appeal, and again, he won the appeal.

Starting point is 00:30:23 And sentence only got reduced 12 months in one day. Judge clearly doesn't like him. So what's the game plan for him going forward? Like, how much does he have left on his sentence? And is there a way to, you know, is there a way to get him out? As of right now, the earliest Joe can get out is 2030.

Starting point is 00:30:43 That's the earliest he can get out, and he's battling cancer. He has prostate cancer. So he's sick. So he's at like a minimal security type of a prison because of his treatments that he has to get every week with chemo and various things. So, but the earliest can get out is 2030. He's fought this all the way up. He's trying to get the Supreme Court to review the appeal. The Supreme Court doesn't want to touch it.

Starting point is 00:31:05 So they just came out with their ruling a few days ago that they weren't going to look into it. So they don't even, you know, nothing ever got to be presented to them other than what was submitted. Right. They never got to hear the actual hearings of it. So I don't know if anything can be done for him to be able to get out any earlier than 2030. But it's becoming very well known that I think his murder for hire is pure shit. And, you know, again, people can say what they want to say. They have a right to free speech, whether we like it or not.

Starting point is 00:31:36 it wasn't like Carol Baskin was directly able to hear that he wants to do a murder for hire on her in this conversation. She didn't know that that conversation would have took place. So how could she feel like an assault? You know what I mean? Or like some sort of verbal assault. It wasn't directed to her. So again, where's the intent? And the intent wasn't there.

Starting point is 00:32:00 But when you convince a jury, he did this to Five Tigers. Well, it's reason to believe he would hire somebody to murder. murder his his rival in Florida. And that's how that all came about for Joe. You know, I don't think the dude should be sitting in prison for all that right now. Yeah. Yeah. Anything he, any stupidity.

Starting point is 00:32:19 I mean, he probably deserved a few years for stupidity. For sure. I met multiple people that deserve two or three years just for just for pissing off the public, basically. Yeah. Or, no, I was thinking for just doing stupid things in the course of an investigation. It's like, you know. Like, yeah, or being indicted and being offered three years because that's probably what you deserve, even though you don't know you're guilty. You probably just, you were such an idiot during the investigation and during the process of this business you were running, you said and did some stupid thing.

Starting point is 00:32:53 You probably should get three years, but instead you said, oh, I'm not going to go to jail at all. I don't, I didn't do what they said and I'm not, okay. And then you go to trial and they get, you know, 15 years. Right. Right. You're like, yeah, but you did say this. You did do this. Like you did do some stupid thing.

Starting point is 00:33:07 You don't deserve 15 years. You deserve three. You should take it in three. Right. We don't deserve 15. Well, yeah, but you should take another three. Right. That's the penalty of going to trial, which I don't agree with.

Starting point is 00:33:17 But that's the way it works. The way it works. So, yeah, I mean. So that, that, so you look into, you look into that whole thing. I do. And, I mean, obviously. You know what? What's unique about me and I became an investigative consultant because I try to consult.

Starting point is 00:33:35 for families. I'm not, I'm not the guy that's going to sit outside of a house waiting on a cheating spouse or any of the crap. That's Tom Simon. I don't. I don't. I know Tom Simon does that. You know who Tom Simon is? I don't do that. He's a retired FBI agent that has a, he's a, I'm going to say, I thought it was linked with the FBI. But yeah, Florida, he's now a Florida investigator. And now he chases, he follows people that, like, cheat on their spouse or something. He didn't do it. He didn't do that. I'm just joking. He'd be like, I don't do that. What do that shit? But, yeah. But, yeah. Yeah, so for me, I'm an investigative consultant, and given my background is unique, right, being that I've been on the law enforcement side of things, you kind of understand how it works, you understand how the court process works. And even though I consult a lot of times for families to try to get them to understand, maybe they didn't get the answers they needed on their family member, their loved ones suicide, right? They didn't believe it was a suicide, and then you see all the facts, and then you can explain it to them in a way that they understand, right? So there's all kinds of things. but as much as I've been a very much a pro-law enforcement guy,

Starting point is 00:34:36 I am very much for helping people that are wrongfully convicted. In Joe's case, I do think the murder for hire is a bunch of shit, and it's been proven at this point. Yet he's still doing time for it, and I think that's an injustice. But what I encountered with a lady by the name of Melanie Curtin, Now, that is a case where I feel the injustice was overwhelming. And in my opinion, malicious prosecution. For those that don't know the story, in Louisiana in 2019, there was a high-ranking sheriff's deputy.

Starting point is 00:35:25 He was a head of their SWAT team and head of narcotics. His name was Dennis Perkins or Denny Perkins. He was arrested along with his wife's son. Cynthia Perkins. She was a school teacher. They married in 2018. They were arrested in 2019, and you're talking over 160 arrests for crimes against children. There was also adults. There were charges against adults. There was beastiality. There were a treasure trove of stuff that took place. So when this hit the news in October 2019, it went national. It was on every major news channel because it involved the high-ranking deputy. And you're talking a monster amount

Starting point is 00:36:08 of charges, right? So when they started doing them, when they arrested Denny and Cynthia Perkins in October of 2019, the same day they were arrested, they did a search warrant on his house. They uncovered enough camera equipment inside that residence to outfit an entire movie set. Every corner of the house, everything was recorded at all times. they found numerous hard drives, monitors, just a whole bunch of evidence, right? So they have to start extrapolating it. How they got caught was, and this is going to be gross, and it's okay to be descriptive, like warning to anyone that's listening.

Starting point is 00:36:53 The problem, how he got caught was they made cupcakes at the house. Oh, I know. And he ejaculated into the cupcake batter. It was made into cupcakes. The wife brings cupcakes into the school. You remember this? Yeah. The cupcakes are then fed to the students, and pictures are taken of the students eating

Starting point is 00:37:19 the cupcakes. During that time, and whether it was the cupcake incident itself or other times that Cynthia Perkins was taking pictures of. students, Denny Perkins was then using software like Adobe and various things and was, you know, basically cutting and pacing pictures of himself as if like, you know. Yeah, yeah. You get it, right? So he was doing those things with you.

Starting point is 00:37:48 So that's, that ended up getting reported to, I forget what, but it's, it's basically like, the FBI monitors that, right? exploited children, you know, things like that. Well, that then got kicked to the Attorney General's office. Being that it involved the high-ranking deputy, the Sheriff's Office can't investigate it because it's one of their own. Right. Right. And then the prosecutor's office, knowing Denny and working with him, well, they have to recuse themselves because of that relationship. So it had to be investigated by the Louisiana Attorney General's Office. So they went full on in this thing. So they start pulling all this information. Well, about two months into

Starting point is 00:38:29 the arrest they start putting out publicly that there's a third person involved with Dennis and Cynthia Perkins. So everybody, to include me, reading this is like, holy crap, who's involved with this? Who's involved with doing this disgusting stuff to children? Then they ended up arresting a lady in March of 2020, and her name was Melanie Curtin. She was arrested on a cruise ship. she went on a cruise, came back, the cruise ported there in New Orleans. And the Attorney General's office is there with a whole bunch of law enforcement.

Starting point is 00:39:10 They basically raided it to get her out and then perp walked her. For those that don't know what a perp walk is, it's pretty much where they set it up, the media set up there at stage, and you have your detectives and they walk out with the person and they get all their media shots and clips with that way. It's called a perp walk. They perpwalked her. And then the third person is now arrested, which is Melanie Curtin. Well, Denny and Cynthia Perkins are tied to the children.

Starting point is 00:39:36 So what are you naturally going to think Melanie Curtin did? I mean, she's done some kind of something to do with, you know, children, right? That she was involved with this, this whole thing. She's involved. Correct. So that's what they did. That was the narrative. That was what they staged it with.

Starting point is 00:39:54 So she's now arrested. she has to go through her whole entire court proceedings. She has an attorney. They're trying to give exculpatory evidence. It comes down time for her trial. What does she charged with? She was charged with aggravated rape, and it had nothing to do with children. Absolutely nothing to do with children.

Starting point is 00:40:16 What they found, and that's a good question, what they found was in 2014 on this hard drive, Denny and he was in a different relationship at that point as he was married, but to somebody else. I refer to that person as the victim. Okay. So in 2014, they find this video. And what it looks like, it looks like Melanie Curtin, Denny Perkins, and this other female, this other female looks to be completely unconscious. And there's a threesome.

Starting point is 00:40:52 Okay. All right. And they have this threesome that they find. Well, when the Attorney General's office originally went, they thought they had Denny's current wife, Cynthia Perkins. Denny and Cynthia both claimed they didn't know each other before 2018. All right. So here's this video of 2014 that they think is Cynthia Perkins. So they've got this, I got you moment, right?

Starting point is 00:41:18 except when they bring the victim in and they show her the video, she immediately is like, Melanie doesn't look right. Now, you would think as an investigator on a high profile case, someone makes the comment, well, Melanie doesn't look right. Well, first of all, you now know that that's not Cynthia, right? And then it should be, well, what do you mean Melanie doesn't look right? How do you know, like, do you, how do you know Melanie?

Starting point is 00:41:45 Like, explain that. Oh, we were friends. Well, they were friends. They knew each other for a year, right? So she's going to know her friend, and if her friend's demeanor is not correct. But they never asked, what do you mean she doesn't look right? It is now known that Denny Perkins, a narcotics detective, brought home drugs to the house, was known to drug as adult victims.

Starting point is 00:42:08 And you're not going to ask, what would it mean she doesn't look right? Because me as an investigator, before I can determine if this person's a defendant, right, or a suspect, I need to rule out that they're not a victim too. And instead of asking any follow-up question, I shit you not, not one single question to what do you mean she doesn't look right? It is silence on the audio recording for two minutes, not a single question, just your paper is ruffling. And then it moves on to something else, right?

Starting point is 00:42:38 So that's what got Melanie involved. So now that's, so when this investigation happened, they started saying the third person, involved. They were actually talking about Melanie in this video. But that's five years early. It has absolutely nothing to do with children. Nothing. Right? So

Starting point is 00:42:57 she ends up trying to talk to her attorney. They're trying to talk to the Attorney General's office. They're not having it. They charge with aggravated rape. In order to get an aggravated charge in the state of Louisiana, it has to be two or more people or a weapon has to be involved.

Starting point is 00:43:14 Denny Perkins was the other person charged with the aggravated. So her and Melanie had the same charge. That's how they're able to go forward with it. Comes down time for the trial. There's something called a rape shield law, which I believe in because there are victims and you don't want them talking about things that could be dangerous towards them or bring up certain assaults and things like that. So I believe in the rape shield law.

Starting point is 00:43:44 But the way that this trial went on, there was a judge in Louisiana that was new to the bench. So this is one of his first, especially his first big case, but he was brand new to the bench. And you have an attorney general's office that took the law to an extreme, which prevented Melanie from being able to provide any type of exculpatory evidence that would have shown that, hey, I didn't do this. right by that i mean anytime they wanted to question certain things or an example denny perkins internet search history none of that could be brought in photos of this victim posing in the same manner as the video remember she was in she was in a seven-year relationship eight-year relationship with denny you would think she would be able to recount these things but there's photos and videos of her role playing the

Starting point is 00:44:39 same exact demeanor that was in that video that's got Melanie on these charge. But due to the Shield law, they kept that out. She wasn't allowed to ask questions. Everything that she tried to do as considered exculpatory evidence wasn't allowed in. So basically the jury watches this video. It's 17 minutes long. And they're like, oh my God, this is horrendous. She gets convicted. So she gets convicted December of 2021. This is a separate trial. This is a separate trial from Denny and Cynthia. This is before Denny and Cynthia even pled out to their charges. So Melanie now gets convicted. Life in prison without the chance of parole. That's what aggravated in Louisiana gets you. Life in prison without the chance of parole. They convicted her on that charge. So she's got no shot, right?

Starting point is 00:45:30 She's hauled off and now she's got to serve her time. They ended up, so, fast forward just a little bit more. A few months later, Cynthia Perkins pleads to 40-something years, but with her cooperation. Denny Perkins pleads to 99 years and something else. He'll never see the light of day. So now they're pleaded,

Starting point is 00:45:54 but a part of his plea deal did not have that charge that Melanie is now sitting in prison for. So how is she, how is it aggravated if the other person's not charged? Well, exactly. He was charged at the time her trial went on, but they did not put that as a part of his plea agreement. You would think that if the charge was that important to put Melanie Curtin away for life, that they would have stuck that charge with his plea deal, but they didn't.

Starting point is 00:46:22 So the family, or was her sister, was Melanie's sister, reached out to me March, April of 22. So Melanie was already serving about four or five months in prison. Sister reaches out to me and she's like, Jim, I know you've done exceptional work. I know the senior shows. I know the things you've done, but you also worked out there in Louisiana. You know how this stuff works. We need your help.

Starting point is 00:46:46 Can you help us? And I was like, yeah. So I did the same damn thing I did for Joe Exotic. I read through the trial transcripts. I don't want to know what everybody else's opinions are. I want to come up with my own, right? So I read every damn thing line for line, and I started making notes of what I saw.

Starting point is 00:47:07 Shill law, Whip shield law, right? But then the family started providing me information, and I'm like, oh my God, this is insane. Here's an example.

Starting point is 00:47:19 Check this shit out. When this case went down in 2014, it happened November, November 7th of 2014 is when this video is. The reason it's known is because it happened on a Friday night. The next night was Saturday night and LSU was playing Alabama. that guy right there loves Alabama.

Starting point is 00:47:40 What year was it? 2014. I do believe you guys won. I think anyway. So that was going on the next day. Melanie Curtin, so this event goes down at Friday night. The next day,

Starting point is 00:47:55 she's in the emergency room with signs and symptoms, which are very much similar to somebody that's been drugged. Now, the problem for Melanie is that she was still married. She had kids. she brought her family to the emergency room. She didn't understand she had a headache that she could not get rid of. She had extreme back pain. She had all kinds of ailments going on out of nowhere, like trouble breathing,

Starting point is 00:48:18 like her respiratory functions were wrong. So they did blood work, but it was your typical metabolic panel. It wasn't like we're testing specifically for foreign substances. They didn't think they needed to. But all her signs and symptoms, she was having some sort of reaction to something. Right. There's no way in hell she's going to know.

Starting point is 00:48:41 In five years from now, I'm going to need this for my defense. Right. Right. This is the next day. So I get this information and I'm like, well, how in the hell? Like that doesn't make sense because these signs and symptoms. Like I called medical friends that I knew and I said, would these be consistent? And they're like, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:48:59 Those are consistent with somebody that could have been drugged. So then I start looking into things more. And I start finding out there was a bunch of text messages. So the original trial for Melanie was supposed to happen in the spring of 2021. The few days before the trial was to start, the quote-unquote victim finds a cell phone from that time frame, gives it to the Attorney General's office. And now that all has to become part of discovery, right? So the trial gets put on hold. They got to get all these text messages.

Starting point is 00:49:32 Defense gets a look at these text messages. but some of the text messages could not be revealed to the jury because of the Rochield law. Only some of the text messages, not all of them, right? Again, not able to have a defense. And in those text messages was the victim messaging Melanie not only the night before, but coercing her to come over. Like, hey, you need to come over. Why don't you do it?

Starting point is 00:49:59 When you come over, come over? She's like, I've got my eight-year-old son with me. It's not an opportune time. I'm somewhere else right now. Come over after. Just come over. Just begging her constantly to come over. Denny wants to watch the movie with us.

Starting point is 00:50:09 Just come over, right? 11 o'clock at night, she finally says, okay, I have my 8-year-old son with me. If we're just going to watch the movie, he'll probably fall asleep. So I'll come over and hang out for a little bit. She comes over. The last text message is at 1108 until the next day.

Starting point is 00:50:23 The next morning, the victim is now texting Melanie, asking her, hey, girl, how you doing? I'm not doing good. I'm in the hospital right now. I don't feel I don't remember anything. Literally in text messages. I don't remember what happened. But the victim remembers everything.

Starting point is 00:50:41 And the victim is like, you know, and so Melanie's like, did you have anything to drink? She's like, the only drink I have is from your drink. Right. Okay. There's no way in hell she knew that this is going to be relevant five years later. No shot. But yet, all those text messages were not allowed to be revealed to the jury.

Starting point is 00:50:58 So I'm like, well, that's certainly odd. Internet search history not allowed in. Prior photos, videos, not allowed in. So I'm starting to see this whole dynamic, and I'm like, she got railroaded. Right. Like, she didn't commit this shit. She's a victim herself. So looking into this time and time again, and then find out, so when the victim testified in Melanie's trial, she got on the stand, and it sounded like she was the type of pretty,

Starting point is 00:51:34 If you move to the neighborhood, she's going to knock on your door with a basket full of cookies and some more welcoming gifts and just, you know, just would never do anything wrong whatsoever, right? She said on the stand that she would never have engaged in threesomes, any type of swinging. She would never do any of that kind of lifestyle. Absolutely not what had happened. But then we find out in 2005 and her first divorce in another state, she wrote a sworn affidavit. and in that sworn affidavit, it specifically stated the reason she was divorcing her husband at that time was because of the multiple orgies and swinging events that she was involved with at him that he wanted her to do that was also on video. Right.

Starting point is 00:52:21 Okay. So you have a person that's now testified in court stating that they never would do anything like that, ever. but now there's an affidavit saying completely otherwise. So it's got to bring in the question. Is this role playing? Because clearly you were down with this lifestyle before. And now all of a sudden this is happening with Denny. Are you sure this?

Starting point is 00:52:43 Like, that's why the videos and the photos were important, right? So. Was all this handed over to the defense? Defense had, I don't know if the, I don't believe the defense had the affidavit at that point. Okay. Because that was considered new evidence. So I don't believe they had that. But a lot of the evidence they did have was blocked.

Starting point is 00:53:03 Like Melanie literally wasn't able to provide. So Melanie got an attorney by name of Julie Tissard that did her appeal. And Julie had all this information that was found and put together. And she articulated this so well that it went to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. So now we're talking October of 23. So now she's been serving coming up on two years, right, that she's still. in prison for and the first circuit court of appeals comes back and says need a letter out of prison there were 11 issues within her trial that showed extreme prejudice towards the defendant being hurt

Starting point is 00:53:43 right seven of those was the the um the abuse of decision i want to i don't want to say abuse of power because that's not really the right word it's more like the abuse of discretion of what is allowed in or not from the judge. Seven times exculpatory evidence that should have been allowed in from Melanie's defense was never allowed into her case. So it's essentially getting slapped on the hand seven different times. That is a lot in a trial that's only four days long, five days long, right? So that looked really poorly on the judge.

Starting point is 00:54:21 And again, in his defense, he was new. So I think, and I will say that 99% of the times, his rulings were probably would have been okay, but this is that one case that it wasn't, right? So that's what is outlined. So they allow Melanie to get out of court or get out of prison. So she gets out of prison. And that was in October of 23. Judge is hot, her first ever court appearance in front of him. They put her right back on a $350,000 bond, right back in all the same stipulations she would have when it's either bring her up on a new trial or drop the charges altogether. That's right. That's what was recommended.

Starting point is 00:54:59 But they didn't. So they put her back on a $350,000 bond. Ankle monitors can't leave. There's all these stipulations, right? Well, but they didn't, you said they didn't retry her. Oh, they did later. They did. They did later.

Starting point is 00:55:12 Okay. So the first thing the Attorney General's office did is they went to the Louisiana Supreme Court and they filed an appeal to overrule the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Okay. So we have to wait on that. So Melanie is a free woman at this point, but she's being monitored, ankle monitors and so on. She's being treated very poorly.

Starting point is 00:55:30 Again, had to post another $350,000 bond. So she's $700,000 in bonds, right? And then whatever cash they've had to pay, she's got to be monitored. It was just a nightmare situation. Several months later, the Louisiana Supreme Court comes out unanimously. Unanimously. No, we are not overruling the First Circuit Court of Appeals. This is spot on.

Starting point is 00:55:52 You either drop the charge or you're going to have to, or retryer. right so now they've got a retryer but now this new evidence all the stuff that wasn't allowed in last time is now allowed in it's now now allowed in so several months go by they decide okay we're going to bring her back to trial so the first trial was supposed to happen in november that we just had did they come to her and say look you know just plead guilty to this and we'll give you time serves because they do that a lot right when they realize like oh fuck we're about the loot we might we don't have a great shot here let's just get her to let's get her to plead guilty to something to keep us from being sued. To stay face.

Starting point is 00:56:33 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, save face. We still get a win. And there's no chance she can sue us because she's going to have to go in front of court and admit to, okay, time serve. And I did do this. And then that kind of quashes your civil lawsuit. 100%. So my understanding, there were little talks about that.

Starting point is 00:56:52 But there was mandatory that she would have to register as a sex offender. And she's not going to do it. She is not. I mean, she's been adamant since day one. I never did anything wrong. Why am I being treated like this, right? So they have to bring her back to trial. But they can't bring her on an aggravated charge.

Starting point is 00:57:09 Because remember, that's now Denny never pled to that. Yeah, yeah. So they decide they're going to bring her, they're going to lower the charges. So they lower it to simple. Man, it carries a 25-year sentence. You know, Melanie wouldn't take a plea. It's a 25-year sentence. She's already had to serve sometime, right?

Starting point is 00:57:30 But from when this started in 2020, it's 2026. This has been going on for six years, right? Every media outlet when she was arrested up until current talks about her being involved with the children. She's the third person involved. So they absolutely set a narrative to every bit of it. She is the third person involved with children. On any post that you go to that's made about this,

Starting point is 00:57:55 Somebody will go on and talk about she should be behind bars because she's involved with the children. She had nothing to do with the damn children. Yeah, yeah. Nothing, right? So here it is. They got to bring her back. So they drop it to simple, simple rape. They're going to bring her back to trial.

Starting point is 00:58:09 But now it's all public, right? So all the information that was held out the first time, the appeals court said, this has to come in and it's exculpatory. You can't use the rape shield law to a point where it completely, prohibit somebody from having a defense. So what ended up getting introduced? There were hundreds and thousands of role playing, not just with the said victim, but Cynthia Perkins and other females where they're playing unconscious, putting a towel or a shirt or a sweater or a pillow over their face.

Starting point is 00:58:49 You know, that was his fetish. His internet search history showed that. he had a massive fetish for a woman to be playing unconscious or to be acting dead, and it's almost like fantasy. Right. Right. He would tell his victims, like, hey, if you wake up while I'm doing this, you just, just roll play it. Right.

Starting point is 00:59:09 Continue until I finish, right? That's why that was important, right? The affidavit could come into play, right? The questions of their lifestyle and involvement, the hundreds of videos and photos he had of of the said victim, role playing in the exact same manner that had absolutely nothing to do with Melanie Curtin can now all come in. The emergency room stuff can come in. The full text messages can come in. The state has a really shitty case. They have a terrible case. Why on earth they had blinders on? But for whatever reason, they wanted to go after Melanie. And so her trial starts. I'll tell you

Starting point is 00:59:48 this right now. I did a podcast the week prior to her trial and I talk about these things. And sure enough, they want to silence me. They called my podcast an erroneous podcast full of lies. They wanted to introduce onto the record to start trial. They wanted the Zoom call that had the judge on there with the attorneys about this erroneous podcast full of lies. Is this a new judge? It's the same judge. Are you fucking serious? You can't use the same fucking. Same judge. And the same situation. Because he's going to tweak everything to the tour of the prosecutor.

Starting point is 01:00:23 At this point, everything is going to go to the, but he's still going to try and get her found guilty to kind of vindicate the fact that, that, yes, I was overruled on these things. But she was still found guilty. Like it had nothing to do with her verdict. So it was in the same courthouse, same judge, same prosecutors, different defense attorney. Okay. So they started a whole thing out. this erroneous podcast full of lies. Right.

Starting point is 01:00:51 Every damn thing I talked about was in writing. It was in black and white. It was all the attorney general's offices info. Right. The appeals. I just went to the First Circuit of Appeal and just download the PDF. Supreme Court rulings. The trial, everything that I could get, I had public record of.

Starting point is 01:01:09 When they listed out all of Denny's charges in 2020, like I got that online. And it details everything. But what did that do? it gave me a timeline of he and the victim's actual lifestyle, right? There were things within that that he was charged with. Example. These are all things that could have come up in her trial. The victim, when she was with Denny, she found that Denny had a spy watch.

Starting point is 01:01:36 He used to put the spy watch in the bathroom because his stepdaughter, which would have been this victim's daughter, he was recording her. He was recording the daughter when she was. shower. He had a monitor in the attic that she also found that showed her daughter in her bedroom. It's a live feed. He was recording these things. She knew this. She claimed she called 911, but she didn't know, did somebody else called him and warned him about it. She confronted him about the spy watch. He smashed the spy watch. Broke it. She also knows about him going into her daughter's room when she had a friend spending tonight and him recording, you know, up the, up the shorts and

Starting point is 01:02:16 things like that of these two teenage girls as he, you know, pledgered himself and released himself on the edge of the bed that he covered up with a comforter. She knew of all these, and there's so much stuff, knew of all this, but she never called law enforcement. She never came forward with any of it, not until she was interviewed before all this started coming to light. So she held on this information six years, seven years, never reported any of it. And I've always wondered, well, why is it that she's getting this treatment of said victim when honestly she should be a defendant herself along with Denny? She knew of these things involving her child and did nothing about it, right? That if you don't protect your child against and you have that information, think about how many victims could have been prevented had she had come forward back in that time.

Starting point is 01:03:06 But she didn't. She kept it all hidden. And it was until she was confronted. So all of a sudden now she's up there giving this expert. testimony of like I never would do this, I never would do that. What are you promised? Like, I know how shit works in law enforcement. What were you promised?

Starting point is 01:03:20 Is it, hey, you either come forward and this is what we want you to say and you'll be fine, or I'm going to charge you for being accessory. Because I have charged people being accessories to crimes like that, that far less knowledge than what she did. Right. And those went through. And they were verified and they were legit. So why is it that she's getting special treatment?

Starting point is 01:03:42 I don't know. So they go to her trial. All that information is now allowed in. And the trial goes poorly for the Attorney General's office. There was a witness that came in that the defense brought in that dated Denny Perkins. And she took sleeping medication, I believe. She would, and so Denny would tell her, hey, take your sleeping medication, drive over to my house, get in my bed. And when you get sleepy or you get you fall asleep, I'm going to come in.

Starting point is 01:04:15 And if you wake up while I'm doing this to you, just keep role playing it. Like you're like your unconscious. Don't move. Okay. That had that that went in there, which goes to show. Remember this video. So the video that got Melanie Curtin, you have the victim laying on a bed. She's got her face covered.

Starting point is 01:04:35 And then, you know, you have Denny and Melanie doing some things. and then, but Denny is also sexually involved with the victim at that time. The victim is then shown, like, if you're unconscious and you're out cold, and I edit this if you have to, but, but one point Denny slips out of her, she grabs him and gets him right back in. Right. She's doing things to keep him excited throughout the whole entire act. So how the hell are you seriously unconscious if you're able to,

Starting point is 01:05:09 to know, oh, he slipped out, let me put him right back in and keeping him excited. Also, she didn't have nail polish on. Melanie did. And she's seen rubbing her hands through Melanie's hair, why this is all going on. This was a complete roleplay. But they made it seem like this is a violent. Right. So now the jury gets to know this and look for these things. And so they look for it. They see it. Okay, that doesn't make sense. All the text messages came to light. All those things that we talked about came to light. So they go back to deliberate, and it only took them an hour, a little over an hour, to come back, 12-0 unanimous, not guilty. So now Melanie is a complete free woman. She was convicted the life in prison without the chance of parole. There's no way

Starting point is 01:05:57 in hell the Attorney General's office didn't know that their case was weak-sauce. And without being able to keep all the evidence out, when the truth comes out, which it did, And the first damn thing they say in their press conference, they lost the case because of an erroneous podcast because of the media. And this was guilty by, listen to this. Just listen to this. This isn't saying to me because this is going to come back to bite them in the ass. They blamed it on podcast and media, okay, because the case was poo-poohed publicly before it ever even got into the court. And I sit back and I think about that.

Starting point is 01:06:33 And I'm like, so I got my response to my podcast. I'm going to say it again. At no time did the Attorney General's office come out and correct the record when Melanie Curtin was perp walked and told that she was the third person involved with Denny and Cynthia Perkins. Right. At no time did they try to correct the record that she had absolutely nothing to do with the children. They didn't make any public statements towards it. They still didn't make any public statements towards it. They made no corrections in the media.

Starting point is 01:07:00 They ran with the narrative because that narrative fit for them. Right. why do you think Melanie was convicted the first time? Because everybody thought she was involved with the children. And they kept out all the evidence. Now that all that came in, your case was shit. And it was proven to be shit. And you targeted a woman that had two kids.

Starting point is 01:07:21 Her ex-husband committed suicide in this process. So not only the kids lose their mother to prison on a life sentence that she had nothing to do with, their father committed suicide. Can you imagine what those kids are going through? and they have the gall to come out and just say it's because of the media. Right. No, it's because you did a bullshit job. Right.

Starting point is 01:07:42 You did not, like, you don't leave loose ends like that. You just don't do it. And they want to blame me as a podcaster because I read what was in black and white and called them on their bullshit. Well, it doesn't sound like it's loose ends. It sounds like you didn't have a case. They did it, but they forced one. Right. Because they needed something to stick to the wall to go after damn.

Starting point is 01:08:03 and Cynthia Perkins. Right, to save face. I fully believe the victim that they had, the Attorney General's victim, I think she's probably a victim in a lot of things. I really, really do. There's a lot of shit I'm sure she went through all those years with Denny,

Starting point is 01:08:19 you know, that people don't even know about. And I feel for her for that. But what's amazing in this whole entire thing is that when they got all this evidence in 2019, Denny Perkins was so meticulous. He had a file for each fee. female victim. A legit file. The witness that came forward and talked about what she went through, he had a file on. He had a file on Melanie Curtin. He had a legit file for her. So what ends up

Starting point is 01:08:46 happening is the Attorney General's office to this day still hasn't identified all the females. They never even called this witness that came, that the defense put up. They never even contacted her in all the years that this went on. But yet you know that Melanie Curtin's a defendant, but you don't even identify their other victims. But you want to come out and blame a podcast, but then say you want to do more for victims? Well, then do more for victims. But they literally, in my opinion, malicious prosecution like I've never seen before,

Starting point is 01:09:23 they took an innocent woman and put her in life behind bars. If it wasn't for her sister coming forward to ask for help, if it wasn't for meticulously reading through, and then obviously Melanie getting a great appeals attorney, a great defense team for her second trial, you know, she put together a good team to give her the right defense without that stuff happening. She would have served the rest of her life behind bars for what? And they want to come out and blame a podcast? Like, take a damn good look in the mirror and realize that you did a shitty, shitty job. And you put somebody behind bars that had no reason to be behind bars. And that to me, to this day, is probably one of the biggest injustices I've

Starting point is 01:10:06 seen through the court system. Like all the cards were stacked up against her. Unless we exposed the truth of what really happened, she still would have been sitting there. To me, that should not ever, ever happen like that. Like people believe you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent. That's not the case. And it's not the case. And, And, you know, shame on them for doing this. And what Melanie do from here, I don't know. I know you mentioned, you know, lawsuits or civil. I'm quite certain that'll end up happening.

Starting point is 01:10:38 But that's going to be up to Melanie and her team. But I do know that they can never come at her again for this. It has been proven without a shadow of a doubt that she had nothing to do with this. We should have her on the podcast. Let's go back to the beginning and kind of figure out how you get into law enforcement. So for me, the law enforcement, the initial thoughts of it was actually I was in high school still. And I had someone try to break into my house. So they cut the screen.

Starting point is 01:11:06 They try to get the sliding glass door. They were trying to get that open. They weren't successful. My dad was out of town. At that point, he had had a better job, so he was traveling. I came home and saw that. And so I had to call 911. They sent people over.

Starting point is 01:11:24 they dusted for fingerprints and all those things. But I saw how they were trying to investigate it. And I'm like, God, that just looks kind of cool. Like, I don't know. It's just something about it, the response. But what really brought me to law enforcement was, you have times your interactions with law enforcement. We either make you love that, love law enforcement or hate them.

Starting point is 01:11:44 The reason I ended up loving law enforcement was, again, I was in high school. I was home alone. They didn't have a suspect. They dusted for fingerprints. and the cop that was working that night told me. He says, hey, I'm on shift for the next few days. He goes, every time I patrol through your neighborhood, I'll just hit your windows with my spotlight.

Starting point is 01:12:04 You'll see it come through and you know it's me. And I didn't think he was actually going to do it. But sure enough, later that night, he came through the neighborhood, hit my windows with a spotlight, just letting me know he was there. And he did it true to his word. He did it for the few days that he was on shift. And from that moment on, I was like, man, I think this is pretty cool.

Starting point is 01:12:23 Like, I kind of want to do the same thing. So for me, I already knew when I graduated college, I was going to go into law enforcement in some sort of way. Oh, I thought you were hoping to go into the NFL. Well, I wanted to go to the NFL. Well, it was a back-up plane. It was certainly still there. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 01:12:38 I mean, your sports career has to come to an end at some point. Right. And when it comes to an end, whatever it be, whether it's college or after, it's to be able to get into law enforcement. Where'd you go? I ended up starting out my career in Baker Police Department, which was in North Baton Rouge. I started out there. I worked there for eight or nine months before I ended up transferring to the sheriff's office. And I worked in Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office, which was right on the outskirts of Baton Rouge. And I worked everything from uniform patrol, undercover narcotics, was on special response team and eventually made my way into detectives and worked homicide cases. And by the time you graduate, you're already half four years of military. Correct.

Starting point is 01:13:20 You know, because don't most of them want you to have like at least a year of some kind of experience? I mean, every place is different, I understand, but it's usually kind of like they either want you to have military or have like some kind of like a year of something. I know that like most of the counties here, like they want, they require you to work, but they want some kind of law enforcement or I think they put you into the jail for a certain period of time. And then they'll kind of bring you out, push you on patrol or something. like that. A lot of people start that way. It's just to get you some experience. Military never hurts anybody on any resume. Just because the things you learn that the way, the things that you do in the military, the way that it runs, it's just a little bit different. And so when you get into what we're referred to as civilian life after the military, everything just seems to be relatively simple in

Starting point is 01:14:11 comparison to what you've already been through. So I think that's a lot of the mindset, especially in law enforcement, you know, to chain of command, you know, to follow rules. And, you know, have to have a certain character. So, yeah, I kind of fit right in. Did you work for like, you said the Sheriff Department? Yeah, I was there for about four years, four and a half years. So you ended up with the Secret Service, right? I did.

Starting point is 01:14:35 But before I went to the Secret Service, the reason I had to leave the Sheriff's Office, I actually went back into the military as an officer. I had my oldest son was autistic. By this point, you're married and you have a kid? Yeah, I had a kid. At the time, I had another one on the way. My oldest boy has autism, and to get services back then on something that wasn't as widely known as it is today, to get services, especially on a sheriff's office paycheck, man, it was tough.

Starting point is 01:15:09 I mean, you're talking $150 for a one-hour occupational therapy or speech therapy or anything of the sorts. So I worked every detail possible. I mean, most days I work seven days a week, somehow, some way picking up any kind of extra detail assignments I could do. It was never home because I had to try to pay to give my kid a chance. It just got to the point where I couldn't hold on anymore. And so going back in the military, I had a degree so I can go back in as an officer. It would, my son would be able to get all the services he wanted at no cost.

Starting point is 01:15:45 It would be a part of the Department of Defense. school systems, but he would get all the services necessary. So to me, it was like I had no choice. I made that choice, went back into the military to get my son all those services. How long did you stay? So I did a little over three years, did tours in Afghanistan, got out from that. It was actually while I was on deployment that I met a couple of Secret Service agents. So the president was going to be, this would have been President Barack Obama at the time. He was going to be stopping in Afghanistan for a very brief speech he was going to give. There were some Secret Service agents that came in advance, so they were there a few days

Starting point is 01:16:25 before the president ever arrived. And there was actually a rocket attack that happened on the air base that I was on. I happened to be there for a meeting. And everybody took off to go get shelter from the rocket attack. And, you know, when you are in a combat environment and you're living on a forward operating base, which is very, very small in comparison to an airfield. And you hear of a rocket attack. You're like, if it gets me, it gets me.

Starting point is 01:16:51 But that thing's going to blow up way outside of that airfield there and it's never going to be anywhere near me. I thought, well, hell, Timmy Horton's coffee, there's not going to be a line. So I just casually walked my butt over there to Timmy Hortons. It was like everybody else is hiding for the rocket attack. I'm going to get my damn coffee. What is Timmy Horton? It's a Canadian coffee brand.

Starting point is 01:17:10 And so on the airfield, they had a coffee shop. Oh, okay. And all I had was that shitty-ass coffee you get in an MRE pack, you know, that we would eat in the field. And I'm like, this is some real coffee. I wanted some damn coffee. So I literally walked right on over there to Timmy Horton's. I got in line. The rocket alarm stopped that had already detonated nowhere near where we were.

Starting point is 01:17:32 And I got my coffee. And I turned around and there was a couple of Secret Service agents. And I started just talking to them. And we just got into a conversation for a good 10, 15 minutes. They told me you should apply. I went home on R&R just a few weeks later. That's when we get to go home for two weeks. And I couldn't sleep.

Starting point is 01:17:52 At that point, I was so used to not sleeping and everything going on in combat. So I opened up the laptop and filled out their wonderful 37-page application. Didn't know if I'd ever get a call or not because I went back to Afghanistan shortly thereafter. and when the deployment ended, my phone rang. And I was on my 30 days. They give us about 30 days off during that whole time frame. And my phone rang and they're like, hey, you know, do you want to interview? And at that point, I completely forgot.

Starting point is 01:18:24 To be completely honest with you, I forgot even applied because I had lost my best friend in combat during that, or one of my best closest friends during that. He stepped on a roadside bomb. And, you know, how, what happened there? What? So we were on, this was back when you had a conflict called Marsha, which went on in Helmand Province. So for those veterans that are listening or served over there, they'll know what I'm talking

Starting point is 01:18:49 about. But Marjah was a major conflict that the Marines had to take. It was very strategic land. There were a lot of al-Qaeda and Taliban members in and out of there. They were making a lot of IEDs or improvised explosive devices. It was just a strategic piece. And so when the margin of conflict happened, it pushed a lot of their fighters out towards the east,

Starting point is 01:19:14 which is where we were. And so anytime that, you know, there's going to be a conflict, we're going to create what we refer to as a killbox. And that is to capture or kill as many of the fighters as possible and rid the enemy, right? So we were on joint missions at that time. He was not too far away from where I was. we were you know this whole mountain range area needed to be cleared they came across an improvised explosive device that they noticed

Starting point is 01:19:44 so what his name is sal corma so what sao did is they threw an infrared chem light so it's just a small little chem light you would see that you know maybe six inches in length you crack it you bend it it cracks you shake it and you throw it on there we'll use an infrared one because those are harder to see in the daytime but at night you can't see it unless you have night vision on and that's more for helicopters EOD things like that so they marked it with the chem light and he called everything in and the explosive ordinance division would not come out unless it was better marked that's according to the battle captain what I mean by battle captain you have a command center there's a captain that literally sits there and we'll give orders he kind of controls everything

Starting point is 01:20:35 from his position and will relay information to Explotive Ordinance Division or to generals or whatever the case is and then relay the information back to you. So he said EOD won't come out unless it's marked better. So Sal responds back and he's like, it's marked with a chem light. Like it's literally sitting on top of it. And they're like, they won't come out unless it's marked better. So you need to take a VF17 panel, which is think of a, massive panel, all right, that you put on the ground for helicopters to see when they're flying so they know where they need to come down at.

Starting point is 01:21:12 Okay. Okay. They wanted him to mark a known improvised explosive device with the VF17 panel. That is probably one of the most idiotic orders that could ever happen because you never go back up to an improvised explosive device once it's found. You don't know if they're going to, how it gets detonated. They can detonate it through a phone. they could detonate it by stepping on a pressure plate. There's numerous ways it can go off.

Starting point is 01:21:39 But that was the order. So Sal responds back and was like, let me get this straight. You want me to go up to a known IED that's already marked and mark it with a VF17 panel. So EOD will come out and detonate this damn bomb. He's like, why don't you just let us detonate it in place? Because they have the stuff. They can detonate it themselves.

Starting point is 01:22:03 they said, nope, that's what you're going to do. You're going to mark it with a VF17 panel. And after it's marked, EOD will come out. There's too much Taliban presence out there. So one of his guys volunteered to go ahead and put the VF17 panel down. And Sal said, nope, if anyone's going to do it, it's going to be me. So he made everybody push out a little bit further to get away from the blast on there. It's almost as if he knew.

Starting point is 01:22:29 I think he knew he was going to get it. He walked up to it. put down the VF17 panel. As soon as that panel hit the IED, he went to go step off of it, detonated it. And it killed him right there on the spot. How did you hear about that?

Starting point is 01:22:46 So I didn't hear about it until several hours later. Actually, I knew there was somebody killed. I didn't know who. And so we finished up our patrols. I ended up getting back to our little operating base. And when I got there, I went to the chow hall, I wanted to eat. I finished up everything I have with vehicles and all the stuff that we do.

Starting point is 01:23:08 My soldiers had already gone to eat. I went to go eat. And when I got in there, my executive officer came up to me and he says, hey, you're needed in the command center. I thought it was for another mission. So I got up. I walked into the talk or the tactical command center. And as soon as I got in there, there was my company commander. and there was a chaplain.

Starting point is 01:23:32 And, you know, when your commander reaches out to hug you before telling you the news, you know it's bad. And then when I first saw the chaplain, I'm like, okay, what happened to my family back home? And then I found out it was Sal. And so I was pissed. I was obviously incredibly sad, bursting out in tears, you know, all that. I mean, that was my boy. And, you know, now I have to bring them back to the United States and bury them. So I ended up packing up my bags and I got to the airfield, flew all the way back to the United States, got all my dress uniforms, met with his family, did all the funeral escorting.

Starting point is 01:24:10 We buried him at West Point and then got back on a plane, went back to Afghanistan, and I got back. I was pissed. I was pissed. I wanted revenge bad. The Secret Service part, I had met those agents about a month before. This happened. before Sal was killed. Right.

Starting point is 01:24:29 It was in late March when I had that, that middle of summer, mid to late March. I went home for R&R at the very end of March in the beginning of April because it was my oldest son, my autistic son's birthday. So I went back for R&R during that time frame. When I came back from it,

Starting point is 01:24:45 we immediately went into missions, and that's where Sal was killed. And so now I find myself back in the United States to do all the funeral escorting. And I'll tell you, that was probably one of the most challenging times for me because I'm confused. I'm upset.

Starting point is 01:25:03 I'm going through it emotionally. I'm processing a lot. Being in a war environment already isn't easy. Being involved in combat isn't easy. But losing your best friend, still being young and not really knowing how to process it. And one of the things I distinctly, distinctively remember was going to Dover, Delaware. And the reason that's important is because that's where mortuary and, you know, affairs is for the military. So any soldiers' life that's lost in combat, they go to Dover. That's usually

Starting point is 01:25:34 where you'll see them coming off of the plane in their casket and things like that, because the military studies each death. So they take photos. They, you know, if autopsies needed, you know, there's a whole bunch of information they can get based on the dead bodies. Right. So that's how they figure out what was in the, in the bombs or, you know, blast radius. I mean, there's all. kinds of stuff that they get from that. So they do that. But what they do in an amazing job of is putting you back together for a funeral. And think about in Sal's situation, he was blown up almost standing on top of an improvised explosive device. His body was completely mangled. I mean, limbs, face. I mean, there was a lot of structural damage. But they took a photo of what he

Starting point is 01:26:26 look like and made a fake jaw, made, you know, part of your cheek and put them back together to be able to have an open casket. But in that process, they have me in Dover, Delaware, they set me up in a hotel that's literally straight across the street from a liquor store. And when I got there, I was supposed to be able to get Sal the next morning. But they let me know late that evening that we need another two days to work on them. Right. And so, for two days, I sat in this hotel with a liquor store literally straight across. And all I did for two days was drink liquor and smoke cigarettes and cry my eyes out and just going through it.

Starting point is 01:27:11 And then they come back and I say, we need one more day. And so I did the same shit. Right. You know, I literally was just cigarette after cigarette. I didn't eat food. I couldn't eat. I just drank. New at some point, I got to shave my face.

Starting point is 01:27:25 I've got to clean myself up, but I can't go in there smelling like a brewery. So, you know, I sobered myself up, you know, in enough time and got myself presental put on my uniform. We went to mortuary affairs, recovered or received Sal's casket and body, and went back to New Jersey where he's from. We did the initial funeral service there in his hometown of New Jersey. And then from there, we did kind of like a convoy or a funeral escorting all the way up to West Point. where he was buried. Is that when, I mean, at that point, is that when you get the phone call? No, then that point is when I completely forgot.

Starting point is 01:28:03 Oh, okay. Like, it was through all of that. You have bigger, you have bigger issues going on. Yeah, it was, it was through all that time frame that I literally was, it was just, I felt like I was in a fog for months over it. I completely forgot that I even applied to the Secret Service. And so I go back to Afghanistan and May. Sal died April 29th of 2010.

Starting point is 01:28:25 I can never forget that, right? I was back there in May. I stayed for the remainder of our deployment. When I came home, it was when I was on that initial, they give you a little bit of vacation time or leave, and my phone rings. And it was a secret service. Like, hey, you're back from your deployment.

Starting point is 01:28:45 Are you ready to do your interview? And like, it took me a minute to go, oh, shit, that's right. I did apply to you guys. So I was like, all right, when and where? So at first I drove to Wilmington, North Carolina, and I did my initial interview. And then I came back. Then I had to do a panel interview. So I went to the panel interview.

Starting point is 01:29:04 The question they asked me were about as basic as they could get. It's just, they just want to know who you are, right? And then I had to go in and do my polygraph. So I had to drive to Charlotte, North Carolina, do the polygraph. I still remember the agent that did it. I ended up working with him later on in life. At the time, I thought he was the biggest dick in America, but in reality, he was actually super cool.

Starting point is 01:29:27 He was just doing his job. But I remember getting in there, had to be there at 7.30 in the morning. And all 37 pages of my application to include their background checks were all there. And it was time to sit down and get in the box, as we refer to it. And so I sat there and, man, we went over that polygraph so many times. I mean, we must have gone through the whole thing, start to finish five or six times. I mean, the taxes were something like, you're lying to me, throwing papers against the wall on a pencil. And I'm like, dude, I'm not lying about it.

Starting point is 01:29:57 I told you everything, you know, and it's just the game, right? And so we play that game. But I walked out of there and, like, the sun was coming down. I got a two-hour drive back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or however to hell long that drive was. And I'm like, I take my name tag off and I threw it out. And I'm like, dude, I did everything right. But there's no way in hell I'm going to get this job. I'm thinking of the way he reacted.

Starting point is 01:30:21 Right. I'm like, just throwing shit against the wall, threw a pencil against the wall, like you're full of shit, you know, and said all that. So I left and I get home and I'm like, all right,

Starting point is 01:30:31 I guess I had to figure out what my next duty station is going to be in the military. And they call me. And they're like, you passed. You're good to go. Now we're really going to dive.

Starting point is 01:30:42 So when Jimmy was so upset, like, oh, that's just Jimmy. That's just Jimmy. I was like, man, you know, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's just the way it works.

Starting point is 01:30:49 So, whatever. Then they do a deep dive into my background. And I mean, hell, I had people calling me that I hadn't even spoken to in 20 years at this point, 15, 20 years. They went all the way to my high school. They went to, they were talking to teachers. And the thing is, like, you give them a list of people that are references. Well, they know they're never going to speak bad about you. So it's like, all right, here's a yearbook that we got. Show me five classmates that he was really close with. And they'll point out five random people. And then they'll go find those people. And then they'll go find those people. They talk to teachers. They talk to, I mean, everybody. They leave no leaf unturned, honestly. And they did the whole background check, and then they come to the house, and they say, okay, your packet's complete. You're available to be hired.

Starting point is 01:31:35 We'll call you if there's a class for you and you get chosen. So you wait and you wait. And then sure enough, they called and they said, hey, we have a class starting here in a couple weeks. Do you want the job? How many people are in those classes? They're small. I mean, I was going to say there's not a lot of secret service. It really depends on what is authorized for finances, like what they can afford to put through.

Starting point is 01:31:57 Because, you know, when you go through the process, you have to start the federal law enforcement training center. It's in Glenco, Georgia. So just south of Savannah. It's actually the town is called Brunswick, Georgia. And so that's where we refer to as Fletsey. And so you have to go through Fletsey first. That gets you certified as, you know, for federal law enforcement. And then from there, you go to Beltville.

Starting point is 01:32:20 Maryland, which is not too far from University of Maryland, college park area. And then that's where the Secret Service training is. And you have to go through everything all over again, which you literally get there and they're like everything you just learn at Fletsey, forget it. That just got you qualified. Now you learn to do shit our way. And it is a long process. I mean, 18 weeks, 20 weeks, somewhere around that. I don't remember now, but it's a long time. The standards are much higher. There are no bullshit agency. I mean, They hold the line on their standards. At least when I was in, that's absolutely how they did it.

Starting point is 01:32:55 You know, you pass everything and then you get the work. You see some chubby chicks protecting some of these recent presidents. I'm not sure about it. I'm not sure. You know, I sure those standards of hell. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I don't disagree. I think there's been some changes that have been made in not only with the military,

Starting point is 01:33:16 but also in federal law enforcement and all different branches. The problem is, and I'm going to say it because I don't care, I say it all the time, you never, ever lower the standards to the lowest person. You've got to make the lowest person come up to the standards of everybody else. And the moment you lower standards, now people start creeping in that technically aren't really qualified, you know, or can't handle what needs to be done. In my time in the Secret Service, that standard was very strict and it did not bend. like you either pass or you don't.

Starting point is 01:33:51 If you want to get on special teams, if you want to be on the president's special response team, as they'll put it, those are some badass dudes. They're all ex-military, the majority of them. They train non-stop. They work out non-stop.

Starting point is 01:34:06 But those guys are elite. But how do you get into that with your elite? You have to pass the standards. And then same thing with you want to protect the president of the United States. You better be on your game. There was a standard that had to be met every month. You qualify with a weapon. Every other month you qualify with the physical fitness test.

Starting point is 01:34:24 Failed to do either one of those, you're riding a desk until you do. Like, it was very strict. Nowadays, from the friends that I have on the inside, that standard's been dropped. And the moment you drop that standard, corners start getting cut. Unqualified people are out there. I mean, hell, yeah, that one lady, she couldn't even holster her weapon. Right. I mean, that's pathetic, for God's sakes.

Starting point is 01:34:45 They make you do it so much. you could literally do it in your sleep. Yeah. It should be muscle memory, right? It's 100,000% muscle memory. And I will say this, too, Secret Service firearms instructors are the best in the world. They are unbelievable.

Starting point is 01:35:01 They cross-trained at the air marshals. And you've got to think, air marshals, you're on a plane. You're in a capsule. You can't miss. Right. So in my opinion, those are some of the best firearms instructors. But what we had in the Secret Service, as much training as they put us through,

Starting point is 01:35:14 every round has to be accounted for like you have a very high standard to meet there is no reason why anybody that's been through that training should have any muscle memory mishaps not knowing what to do, miss a shot, anything. Those instructors are too damn good and they will weed you out if you can't meet the standard. It's funny, so I was arrested by the Secret Service

Starting point is 01:35:37 but also the FBI also had a case on me and I was interviewed by the FBI and the Secret Service. Like the Secret Service from when they arrested me, like, they were just the most professional the entire time. Like, there was not, and, you know, you come in contact with six or eight Secret Service agents. And I mean, everybody was professional, everybody. The FBI was, there was, like, out of the six or so that, you know, there were probably, like, was probably half and there was probably two or three that were just like and there was this one chick that was just horrible it was just like like what are you doing like you shouldn't even be in law enforcement you have such an attitude you're making cracks you're saying just you're just me like you're not you're not creating an in an eliz you're not creating an environment that is induive for me to cooperate with you you're making me want to say go fuck yourself i'll go back to myself right let me just an asshole and it's so funny because everybody that had come after her would say, and I've said her name before,

Starting point is 01:36:43 it was Candace. Candice Calderon, actually. She's retired. She's like a firearms instructor now somewhere. Didn't work. Like she's retired. Yeah, yeah. I think she's cheap.

Starting point is 01:36:55 People pay her to instruct them on a firearms training. So, but it's so funny because everybody that came to talk to me after her, they were like, yeah, I heard Candace was on your case. Yeah. They're like, what did you think of her? I mean, every time I was like, well, that's not. Yeah, I was like, she was, she was difficult. They go, yeah, she is.

Starting point is 01:37:15 Yeah, she is. They were like, intense. Yeah, and I was just like, God, this is the people that work with you. All of them were like, yeah, bro, she's, she's tough, she's a tough cookie. And this isn't one. This is every single one of them said it. I thought, you've got a, you know, you've got an attitude, if that's how you're behaving. But the Secret Service was, they were all just super professional, very polite, professional, you know, but also like, no, no, no, stop.

Starting point is 01:37:38 I go in first. You know, that whole thing is like, you know, very polite, though. Just stern. Like, hey, no, no, no, wait, hold on a second. And that's the thing about the Secret Service is that, like, I mentioned before about the standards and how they do things. And you either have to fit the mold of what they do or you're out. And you have to because of the amount of risk that's put into who you're protecting, right? Right.

Starting point is 01:38:00 You have to be on your game all the time. But they are very, very, very professional. They do the job. They do the job right. And they take pride in that. So I'm glad that the agents treated you fairly, you know, even though with your circumstances, obviously they were after you for some time. They weren't the greatest circumstances from my opinion. But they treated you well.

Starting point is 01:38:19 And, yeah, if I put in front of you all the people that I know that have had run-ins with other agencies that it didn't go so well because of exactly what you're saying, I could fill a room up at that. And that's unfortunate. But I know the Secret Service really does a good job and they really hold that line. At least they did. I'm sure it's still the same. So what was your first station? What do you, assignment? No, I stayed right there in D.C.

Starting point is 01:38:46 So when I finished training, I stayed right there in D.C. And everything I did was relatively protection details. I mean, I went where President Barack Obama went. I went places where at the time was Joe Biden was the vice president. I ended up spending six weeks with Mitt Romney when he was presidential candidate. Went with him when he did his Small Town Matters tour. So I kind of bounced around with that a lot. Sometimes it was get on this plane, get on this plane.

Starting point is 01:39:12 Like we fly military aircraft a lot out of Andrews Air Force base. So the Air Force flies us around. And then there's times that I have to fly commercial. So I'd fly out of Reagan or Dulles Airport and catch your flights wherever you're going. But a lot of it was military. And there might be three big old planes, C-17 planes, and you got one going to Portland, you got one going to Pittsburgh, and you got one going to San Diego. and they'd be like, hey, you know, you're on this one here.

Starting point is 01:39:38 This one's going to San Diego and lie to San Diego and finish the detail and end up in Minnesota and just bounce. Is this a detail like you're walking along with these guys or is a detail where, no, we're going in first and we're making sure this is the route? Yeah, it changes from time to time. You have an advanced team. So sometimes you go in advance to whether you help get things set up or, you know, to start doing a lot of the pre-work. And other times you just show up that that day. Like they're in a presidential campaign. Sometimes you might touch ground and you go straight to work on the event.

Starting point is 01:40:10 And then when the event's over with, you know, you're leapfrogging to somewhere else. I don't want to give too much about how they do it. But, but, yeah. Well, I saw it in the line of fire. So I know exactly how they do it. And so, yeah. So, I mean, you could do sometimes two, three cities in a day. And then, you know, stay for the night.

Starting point is 01:40:28 And some places you'll go. You might be there for three or four days. Like, I got some cool details, too. I got to go to Brazil for like eight days. literally went to Brazil for eight days, sat around on the beach drinking Brahmus, which was their beer because the vice president wasn't coming to a specific day. The pre-work was already done or was done. And so he was only on ground for not even a full day.

Starting point is 01:40:53 He took pictures in the slums of Rio with a bunch of kids. That was primarily the main focus. So he took pictures with the kids there in the slums. And then from there, he walked through downtown Rio and shook, a few hands and smiled for some pictures and kissed a few babies. And then off on the plane he went. And then the plane we got to fly had a part that was broken. And if there's any part broken on an airplane in the Air Force, you have to wait for that part to come in.

Starting point is 01:41:19 So I got an extra two days on the beach drinking Brahmus hanging out, just waiting for that plane to get fixed. And it got fixed. And then I came back and ended up in Palm Springs, California. Now you don't have the episode of off. They can just do it with AI. Yeah. I need Vice President Biden surrounded by a bunch of a bunch of poor skinny kids. Make them more dirty.

Starting point is 01:41:42 They need to be dirtier. Okay. All right. There you go. Okay. Let's change the color of his tie. Exactly. Let's remove the tie.

Starting point is 01:41:49 Yeah. Yeah. He needs to look sadder. Satter. AI something. Yeah. Put everybody out of us out of business. Well, I guess there's some industries.

Starting point is 01:42:03 is probably, no, at some point, yeah, they'll be this. They'll be law enforcement. They're going to need us anymore. Yeah. They think there's going to be robots and AI. As soon as they become, their hands become, you know, more, I forget what the term is it, more dexterity and more, you know, as soon as that type of thing, they perfect that in 10 years from now. But the thing I worry about, what happens when the robots turn against you? I know, but I mean, that's, I'm not worried about that.

Starting point is 01:42:31 And what I'm concerned about is, well, first of all, you know, is that obviously 90% of people are out of work. But you could just tax the robots. You know, everybody's like, oh, universal. Yeah, there will be some kind of universal. But, you know, where are you going to get that money? You're just going to tax the robots. Like you got 45 robots working for you. Well, we're going to tax them.

Starting point is 01:42:51 So you have to pay for that, you know. So, and then that gets redistributed. You have some kind of, I think the real problem is what happens when you, you, when you lose your purpose in life, if I can wake up every day, everybody thinks that, hey, if I won the lottery, like I'd be thrilled. No, you wouldn't.

Starting point is 01:43:08 You just have a different set of problems. Yeah. You know, like, right, you'd be bored. Oh, well, I could just do this or I could do it. No, no. Listen, I was on the run for three years, and fraud is not a full-time job. You have to keep yourself busy.

Starting point is 01:43:21 You'll go nuts. And if you need a purpose, and if you don't have a purpose, you're going to have mass. You're going to have. have people, you know, coming up, you already have it now. You have people just coming up with reasons to create issues that they can, they want to pick it because this, or they decide that they're going to be, I'm a cat now. Right. I'm going to be a cat. You know, like, what? Like,

Starting point is 01:43:47 you don't, you don't have enough problems? You're manufacturing problems? Like, I want to be a cat. And I want special bathrooms. Or I'm going to be a woman and I want to use the men's room. It's like, stop, man. Come on. Don't you have enough problems? Right. But the bottom line is that, that if you lose your purpose, then I think you see like massive. Oh, for sure. Like, you have to have a purpose to get out of bed in the morning. 100%. I mean, close friends that I've had probably, and like your experiences,

Starting point is 01:44:13 I have a good friend of mine that I grew up with in high school, played football with my whole life, who was smart in his businesses. And he created a business and it became very profitable and sold it. He was probably 33, 34 years old, several million dollars. Never needs to work another day in his life, right? within what? Within a year, he was like, I'm so godforsakingly bored. Like, I can only play golf so many times.

Starting point is 01:44:38 Yeah, in the very beginning, it was cool to wake up. I've got no worries. I got nothing to let me make my coffee and hang out. And then he was like, I need something to freaking do. So he started a pool company. Yeah. And he goes around cleaning pool. It's not like he needs the money.

Starting point is 01:44:50 No, no. It's something to do. I need to get out of it. 100%. I don't, it's, it's, we, well, we, I interviewed a guy. Remember the guy that was ambushed? He was ambushed by his ex-wife and her new husband. Remember he killed him both?

Starting point is 01:45:05 It was the one in Ohio. I shot. Fucking amazing story. But he had like a nutrition company and sold it and made, I'm going to just come up with a number. But I mean, it was an ungodly amount of, it wasn't like a few million. It's like 40 million. And he's like, you know, and then like two years later, he's like, I mean, I just, I've done everything I want to do. You can travel for only so long.

Starting point is 01:45:29 You can only do so much before you're like, I have to do something as I started another company. The problem was that company took five or ten years. And then he sold that company. He's like this other company came in. They offered it, gave us an offer that I knew I was never going to see that money before. He did that. Listen, he's done this three times. And then he's like in his probably mid to late 60s.

Starting point is 01:45:48 And he's just like like what you think, oh, the money will solve your problems. You just have a new set of problems. And then even worse, now you can't. can't blame being poor on your problems. You know, so it's, oh, my God, you're telling me that my problems are actually me. I'm a part of the problem. Like, so you're bored, you go a couple years, you drive yourself nuts. You have a couple projects. Those peter out or get completed. And then you're like, fuck. Like, and then you have to do something else. You start another business and you, just like your buddy. And I know, listen, I know people that have, we actually just had a buddy that

Starting point is 01:46:25 basically they're saying it died he he himself by like a drug overdose uh i probably shouldn't say buddy but a guy no um got out of prison and just he just wasn't acclimating right he just wasn't and and he and he's behind and i know he went to just we both basically did about the same amount of time about 13 years you know i got out like several years before him but those first six months or so you realize like you're not equipped like 13 years, I'd never seen an iPhone. I'd never been on YouTube. I've never used an iPhone.

Starting point is 01:47:00 I don't know what Wi-Fi is. I don't know how it works. Right. You feel like a child. It's humiliating, and you're asking children to help you send emails, you know. I mean, you're, I don't know. Where to me? Well, that still happens for me, but, you know.

Starting point is 01:47:15 Yeah. I know. I'm not perfect yet, but. How do I post this on social media? God dang it, dad. You figure this out. But this guy was not, he was not acclimating. And then everybody's basically saying, no, he committed.

Starting point is 01:47:27 Like, I don't know why they're so sure of that. It's not like there was a note. But he basically went in. I don't know. I think maybe he just took it. It was such a massive amount of drugs probably. And that's why they're so sure. I wasn't there.

Starting point is 01:47:39 But yeah, he killed himself. And then I know other guys that are millionaires that have everything. All the toys in the world. And, you know, they're out of the hospital for alcoholism. Like, stop. Bored. Stop drinking. Like, what are you doing?

Starting point is 01:47:55 Like, you just bought a new Ferrari. Like, why are you going to the hospital? Yeah, they keep telling me how to stop drinking. Then why haven't you stopped drinking, you know? Right. Does that make sense? Like, it's like, you've got everything. Because your brain is meant to be engaged in something.

Starting point is 01:48:10 And the moment you stop working your brain, everything falls apart around you. It's the same thing with people that are, you know who military people that retire after doing 20 years and they say physically fit and they get out and they stop working out all together. they're eating everything they see. They put on a bunch of weight and then they have a bunch of health problems and they pass away. They pass away from clogged arteries or heart disease or various things

Starting point is 01:48:33 because they completely stopped everything that they were doing and never kept up with any of it. They just, and boom, it happens. I can't do that. I'm on the run, millions of dollars. I'm still flipping houses. I'm buying houses,

Starting point is 01:48:47 renovating houses. It's like, I have no reason. Okay, well, what am I going to do? Right. Like, I'm going to buy this house for 40. grand. I'm going to dump 40 in it. I'm going to go there and meet with the contractors. And then, and I'm even doing stuff like, no, no, no, I'm going to put in the wood floors myself

Starting point is 01:49:01 because I can do that. You know, I'm going to paint the rooms. Now, I'm not trying to save money, but meeting the contractors is not a full-time job. Right. So I get a couple of kids to help me and a couple of 20-year-old guys that help me. We put in the hardwood floors. And it's like, this is fun. Because otherwise, I'm sleeping until 11. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghostbed is here to help you fix that. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's comfortable, durable, and designed to actually help you rest. Every ghost bed mattress features premier materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive

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Starting point is 01:50:37 Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed in the world. Some exclusions apply. See site for details. Yeah. Rolling out of bed, going getting coffee, going into the gym, walking back when they had malls, walking around the mall, buying socks and underwear,

Starting point is 01:50:55 and then the next day trying to figure out, go into a movie I've already seen by myself. It's like, no, man, I can't. I did that for a couple months. It's kind of a lonely life. Yeah, it is. It is. So, yes, I think that's going to be a major problem.

Starting point is 01:51:07 But back to, back to you, the sidebar. Do you have any, like, stories from your time and the Secret Service that stand out that you can tell? Yeah. Yeah, there's a few. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:51:24 There's a few. Yeah, whose cocaine was it? Yeah, I'm pretty sure we all know the answer to that one. You know, some little, little nose sugar there for somebody. But, yeah, I mean, look, you know, my time in a Secret Service was good. There are a few things that have happened, and I get this question all the time. I don't mind talking about it. I don't really care.

Starting point is 01:51:47 But I was not in Columbia. in 2012 when that all went down in Bogota, Columbia, where Secret Service was arrested. They gone out drinking, right? Or what was it? So there were some agents that had gone out that had done some drinking, and it was alleged that they had solicited some prostitutes locally there. There was a disagreement about money. So I'll tell you the story. So this is the way it went down. I was not on the trip. I always say that. So what happened. Even the address of the brothel.

Starting point is 01:52:21 That's all I did. So they have this trip, right? So the president was going to Columbia. So they send the advanced team out there. So whenever you send that, it's not just secret service personnel. You have military people, right? Because a lot of times we use their canine dogs or their explosive ordinance division. And they literally get tasked with us for several months.

Starting point is 01:52:44 You know, FBI will go to events like that, State Department, things like that. So Secret Service is there in Bogota. Some of the agents went out and it's okay to leave your hotel, right? There's usually a logbook and you have to sign in and out of this logbook like, you know, going to whatever restaurant or you kind of write it down so they have some more idea. And then you sign back in so they know that you're back. If you sign anyone in like your family, sometimes you go to these trips and your family want to go to it. So they might meet you there. And they're okay with that as long as you don't leave classified information out or anything like that.

Starting point is 01:53:22 So they're in Bogota. Some of the guys go out. They came back. They had solicited some prostitutes. There was a disagreement about the money. Girls start flipping out. The hotel security is there. They call for the local police to come.

Starting point is 01:53:40 This is before they knew. When they put the call out, it goes out on the radio. Once that transmission happens, somebody somewhere is going to hear it. News stations monitor it all the time, right? Just random people. Like, you're not getting away with it. As soon as it went out on the radio, they realize, oh, shit, this is Secret Service.

Starting point is 01:53:59 And they wouldn't have put that out on the radio, but it's already too late. Right. Local police show up. So they have to go wake up the agent in charge. And the first place they're going to go to is that logbook, right? Who logged in people? and so long story short, they end up sending some people home. So here in the United States, the next morning, what you see was report secret service

Starting point is 01:54:27 and trouble, arrested, prostitutes, you know, and so on. And then there's this plane that comes back to the U.S. that lands at Andrews Air Force Base. And if you're on that plane, then it was safely assumed that you were a part of what went on in Bogota. that wasn't completely the case. There were some agents that got sent home that actually hadn't done anything wrong. The problem is that, again, when you travel with the military, we kind of had to put the military on restrictions after this. But basically, they signed in local nationals,

Starting point is 01:55:05 but they didn't want to put their room number so you don't get disturbed. So you just put a random room number, right? And so we might block off a certain amount of floors, like let's say in a hotel, you're going to block off four floors, and that's all going to be personnel. They put down different room numbers so they wouldn't get disturbed. So that's what happened. So you got people, and they go and knock on doors, and they're like, hey, you need to pack up your back. You're going back to the U.S., and you're like, why?

Starting point is 01:55:28 Signed into local national. Like, no, I didn't. Well, that'll all be figured out later on. You're getting on a plane and going back to the U.S. So you had people that were coming back that really had nothing to do with it. the majority of the people on that trip were actually part of White House communications or military that set up communications, military, EOD type people. They ended up getting away with it at the time.

Starting point is 01:55:52 There were some agents that had done some wrong, but the majority of them were actually military. And so here's this plane. And so you got this plane that lands and you got spouses that are just losing their shit because they thought for sure, you know, you came back in this plane. there's no way it'll be wrong. And then, you know, the inspector general has to get involved and they do a full investigation. And that's where a lot of that information came to light that, yes, there were some dirty apples.

Starting point is 01:56:17 There were some from the FBI. There were from the military. But not all the Secret Service people that got sent back had actually anything to do with it. But there were a few bad ones. And so I just remember that particular moment because I was in the U.S. at the time. And I remember getting a call and it says, watch the news. And I'm like, what's going on? And it was like, hang up because nobody's going to talk about it on the phone.

Starting point is 01:56:41 And sure of shit, man, I turned on the news and I saw that. And I'm like, uh-oh, it's going to be bad. So then after that happened, everywhere we traveled, like, do you remember when they had Occupy, D.C.? Do you remember that whole thing? It's basically Antifa before it became Antifa. And they would do like Occupy D.C., Occupy Wall Street or whatever. And it's the same damn stuff. So I remember it was only like a few weeks after the Columbia incident had happened.

Starting point is 01:57:11 And I'm in Portland, Oregon with Michelle Obama. And when we got there, like we couldn't go anywhere without these people putting their iPhones at the time, right? Because iPhones were new. There were a few years at this point. They'd put them in your face and just be like, how does our taxpayer dollars go into prostitutes, huh? And they would just rip you. nonstop and you're like, I didn't go on the trip, I wasn't there. And it just constantly, constantly making those comments and putting in a camera in our face and trying to entice us

Starting point is 01:57:48 in any which way. And then, you know, we'll put out like caution tape. Like we have what's called rings of security, right? So if you step on this part of the line, then you're on, because the first lady is on the ground. So therefore I can enforce this. This is a protective. This is protective for us now. You will, you will go to jail if you cross that line. And they would sit there the whole time with the camera in your face, just make and comment after comment after comment, like, I'm going to cross. I'm going to cross. And they would just continue to do this nonstop. And you're looking at this guy. And I'm like, bro, you're 5, 5, a buck 20. Right. Like, I promise you. I want you to cross. Yeah. I will dump you on your ass so fast if you

Starting point is 01:58:29 cross it. And they just continue to tease and continue to tease. And then you made that. cross. Yeah. Oh, and we dumped him on his ass quickly and called Portland PD and he's like, here you go, you know. We put him in his flexicuffs and everything else and into the back of the van and his buddy's recording.

Starting point is 01:58:49 Like, you get that? We'll put that on YouTube. They didn't. But at least if they did, I haven't found it yet. And trust me, I've searched. But those are just some of the little things like that Columbia incident, man. I heard about that ever.

Starting point is 01:59:03 And even now when I thought to people, People were like, oh, did you go to Columbia? And I'm like, no, I didn't go to Columbia. Not everybody's about soliciting prostitutes and Bogata, you know. Just a couple of guys giving their money to charity. Supporting single mothers. Yeah, to go to college. So they gave it to destiny.

Starting point is 01:59:22 I've heard that before. That's funny. Yeah, I love the single mothers thing. So how long had you been in by the time you leave? So I was in the Secret Service. My career was a little bit, was short, and it wasn't that I wanted it to be that way. I absolutely loved what I was doing. I loved the agency.

Starting point is 01:59:41 Met a lot of great friends, a lot of great people, loved the job. But about three years into it, three and a half years into it, I became a single parent. My older boys, their biological mother, became very ill. And I became a single parent and had to take care of my boys. and it was incredibly hard to do that when I'm traveling roughly 20, 25 days a month. I'm never at home.

Starting point is 02:00:09 You know, you can't be a dad that way. And to me, I think the greatest job on earth is being a parent. You know, I love my kids to death. So, again, having one with special needs, and then, you know, my other son is, he's 18 now, but I needed to be there for them. And so I left the Secret Service.

Starting point is 02:00:28 I didn't have much of a choice. I needed to be a full-time dad. And so I relocated to Orlando. You know, I was dating somebody at the time. We ended up, you know, getting engaged and married. And, you know, she's been... But you and your wife got divorced. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:00:43 Yeah, we were already divorced when... Oh, okay. We were already divorced when she became ill. So I needed my boys. And so I became, you know, a single dad and took on that role and was there from every day. So I actually got away from everything law enforcement. because law enforcement is what I loved, but you're not going to get rich

Starting point is 02:01:04 working in law enforcement, right? And I couldn't, I didn't want to go back. I couldn't financially, like if I went to go work for Orlando Police Department, which, I mean, great agency, for me, financially, I needed more than that, to be able to give my boys what they need and everything else, I needed a better financial future. So I actually, and I'd be honest, dude,

Starting point is 02:01:26 I applied so many damn times, trying to get into pharmaceutical or medical sales. And every interview I had, people are like, look, I'd hire you in a second to protect me. But your resume does not scream sales. And I'm like, bullshit. You can teach somebody to sell anything, right? Well, you're not going to be able to teach somebody to get up and grind like I will, right? Between the military through everything else, like you can't force, like, you either you have it or you don't, right?

Starting point is 02:01:52 And there's some tangibles that I have that others, I believe others don't. I will outwork people. Right. And just give me the chance. And it wouldn't happen. And finally, it happened with a company out here in Tampa called Hoy's Pharmaceuticals. And the hiring manager at the time, his son was a medic in the military and wanted to know if I knew his son. And I didn't know his son personally.

Starting point is 02:02:18 But we were at the same duty station at the time that I was still in the military at Fort Bragg. And so we talked. And really, that's what said. He goes, look, he goes, I'm going to give you a chance. He goes, your resume does not scream sales by any means, but I'm going to give you a shot. And so I got a job doing compounding pharmaceuticals for a local compounding pharmaceutical company here in Tampa, Florida. I learned weight loss products and would knock door to door between family medicine offices, weight loss clinics. And I just tried everything I could to push those weight loss products.

Starting point is 02:02:57 Eventually, I learned how to do hormone replacement therapy. So it's another thing that I was able to sell. That's what, TRT? Yeah, like testosterone replacement, bioidentical hormones for females, estrogen, all kinds of stuff. You know, the creams, they do creams. And so that's what I was doing. I was selling that stuff to doctors' offices.

Starting point is 02:03:19 Or actually not necessarily selling to them, was trying to sell them to use our pharmacy. Right. And then they would put in their scripts, and that's what they would get it from. services. Correct. And then eventually compounded like pain creams when that was a big hit before somebody decided to screw that one up. And I believe it was in Texas, they got busted for all kinds of fraud that was going on and charging Tricare military like $20,000 for a pain cream

Starting point is 02:03:45 for 90 days. Like it was insane. We had that guy odd. Did you? We had a guy on. All right. So look at all that turns, right? So, it was insane the amount of money they were paid for this stuff. They're like they're mixing it up in lotion and selling it. It was crazy. And that caused an awful lot of regulations, right? So that's what I was doing. I had a pretty good living. Unfortunately, the owner of that pharmacy died in a vehicle accident back in 2016.

Starting point is 02:04:16 And so from there, I went on and continued to do medical sales until I had an opportunity to go on a podcast and share crime stores. like cases that I've actually worked, right? Like crazy sex-related cases that I've worked, homicide cases, things like that. So I had a little bit of a platform, started sharing that, was asked to look at a 14-year-old cold case at the time. We looked into it. We put it on this podcast that I was a guest on, and we ended up solving it in about seven weeks. Get out of it.

Starting point is 02:04:54 What was it? The victim's name was Courtney Coco. She was out of Alexandria, Louisiana. She was murdered in 2004. And so when the case was presented to us, 2019, it was right before the 15th year anniversary of her passing. And so we just took all the files, the family collected everything that they had,

Starting point is 02:05:17 like all the police reports, all the documents, everything else. And we literally just did it as just a fresh set of eyes. came up with a whole bunch of suspect list, what we think happened. How did she pass away? How'd she die? So the guy that was convicted for her murder was dating Courtney's sister.

Starting point is 02:05:38 And they were hooked on pills and various things. It was over money, essentially. So Courtney had a different father. Her father would, you know, her life insurance money that she would get. So once she turned 18, like every year, she got a certain amount of it. So she had received money.

Starting point is 02:05:54 that September of 2004. So she had about 20 grand cash in a safe. She was going to buy a couple of four-wheeler. They did some four-wheeler riding right before her murder. And then all of a sudden, she just relatively vanishes. Her body was found a few days later in Winnie, Texas, dumped in a warehouse. And that was where the mystery lied for 14 years. She was brought from Alexandria, Louisiana, too, and dumped in Winnie, Texas.

Starting point is 02:06:24 It's very odd, right? So as we found information, there was an informant that came forward to me and gave me some information that she knew about from her ex-husband. And then she went and audio recorded a conversation with him where he talks about some of those key features that proved involvement. So when we got that, we were able to put it all together, gave it to law enforcement. Law enforcement then verifies everything that was said, so that way it holds wait in court. It's not just coming from a random podcaster. They verified everything and they

Starting point is 02:07:01 made their arrest and the guy was convicted and he's still in life in prison without the chance of parole for a murder. And so it was over, it was over cash. No, it was in Alexander, Louisiana. Oh, okay. So I thought maybe she had traveled to Texas. No, no, no, no. She was transported in the trunk of a vehicle and dumped. Okay. And in Winnie, Texas. Okay, so you did that podcast, and what changed? So that opened the floodgates. So once that started, then it was just a lot of notoriety. I mean, no podcaster at that point had ever solved the Cold Case Homicide Live on a podcast.

Starting point is 02:07:40 And so started doing live shows, started doing a lot of public speaking. I have Instagram, the real Jim Rathman. I have a website, Jim Rathman, the company, So if there's people that want me to take a look at their case, they can submit it through there, the YouTube channel, the Jim Rathman Show, and you can follow the Jim Rathman show on Apple, Spotify, High Hard Radio as well. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor.

Starting point is 02:08:05 Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, if you want to check out Jim's any of his links, go to YouTube, Spotify, anything. We're going to leave all of his links in the description box. So you just click on the description box go there, hit the link. It'll shoot you right there. You can follow, subscribe, watch his content. Also, if you want to be a guest, we're going to leave our website. You can go to our website, go to the Be a Guest page, fill out the application, super short.

Starting point is 02:08:33 Leave a three to five minute video about your story. We'll get back with you as soon as possible. Thank you very much. Really to appreciate it. See you.

Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Untold Story of Tiger King

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